1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the area of graphic user interface, and more particularly, relates to a method and apparatus for graphically indicating protected or secured files in a system.
2. Description of Related Art
Many businesses and organizations have been looking for effective ways to protect their proprietary information. Typically, businesses and organizations have deployed firewalls, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) to provide protection. Unfortunately, these various security means have been proven insufficient to reliably protect proprietary information residing on private networks. It has been reported that many unauthorized accesses to proprietary information occur from the inside, as opposed to from the outside. An example of someone gaining unauthorized access from the inside is when restricted or proprietary information is accessed by someone within an organization who is not supposed to do so. Due to the open nature of networks, contractual information, customer data, executive communications, product specifications, and a host of other confidential and proprietary intellectual property remains available and vulnerable to improper access and usage by unauthorized users within or outside a supposedly protected perimeter.
There are many security means are in use. One of the commonly used methods is to apply a password to a file so that the file can only be accessed by those who know or have been told of the password. However, it is well known in the computer community that a password itself or the way the password is embedded in a file do not really deter those slightly sophisticated to break into a password protected file. In fact, there are a few dozens of tools and advices available over the Internet to break into a password protected Microsoft Word document. In a hope to ensure privacy in communications between parties, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) scheme is commonly used to secure files that can be accessed by those whose public keys are used to encrypt the files.
To demonstrate characteristics of a file, such as a PGP file, a standard or default icon is often used. In graphic operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X, various graphic indications of files are employed. Notably, an icon representation is allocated to correspond to a specific file, directory, window, option, or program. FIG. 1 shows an illustration 10 of seven icons under Microsoft Windows Operating Systems to indicate seven different types of objects. By looking at the respective icons, one familiar with a computing environment can readily tell what those objects are, a folder 12, an MS Word document 14, a zipped file 16, a PGP encrypted file 18, an MS Spreadsheet file 20, an MS PowerPoint presentation 22, and a PDF file 24.
One problem with the use of the PGP scheme is that a user or recipient has no idea, by looking at the icon, what an encrypted object may be till the encrypted object is decrypted or the user really gazes at the file name thereof. Essentially, files, whether they are originally created by Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, or StarOffice from Sun Microsystems, after they are encrypted by PGP, the icons look all alike.
Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP (perhaps other versions) introduce a representation of encrypted files under EFS (Encrypting File System). Icons representing files encrypted under EFS remain the same but the color of the corresponding file names is no longer the same. Visually, a user can easily tell that an object associate with a distinct color is EFS secured and, at the same time, can also tell what the object is by looking at the icon.
In many systems or applications in which files are secured, a color alternation to a file name is not sufficient. In addition, a user desires to tell a level of security of the secured files before attempting to access them. Thus there is a need for techniques to efficiently indicate secured files among all other files.